Dangerous Refuge

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Tanner and Shaye headed for the exit. They had just dodged another herd of kids in the lobby when his cell phone pinged, indicating a text had arrived. He took out the phone, saw it was from Brothers, and felt a rush of adrenaline.

  Fifteen

  Tanner shut the car door behind Shaye and started reading the text while he walked around the vehicle and slid in behind the wheel. Several names and addresses, ranging from Tahoe to Reno and Carson City.

  The phone vibrated before he could call Brothers and ask What the hell?

  “Hey, D. What do you have?” Tanner said into the phone.

  “Reputable coin dealers took me about three seconds,” Brothers said. “Best they could do was along the lines of if I find any coins like that, give them a call. The shady ones took a lot longer, because there’s a lot more of them. They don’t talk to cops unless you have a twist on them, so I’ve been trolling the sites where dealers talk to dealers and don’t know I’m a cop.”

  Tanner waited, trying not to remember what Shaye had said about wanting a man who has one foot out the door. He should be concentrating on Lorne’s death, not a sexy woman.

  Shaye wasn’t an easy-answer kind of woman.

  And the sweet curves of her body were making him hard.

  “I hit on some recent dealer-to-dealer sales or trades of Saint-Gaudens,” Brothers continued.

  “Is that unusual? To have hits like that on something specific?”

  “I was curious about that myself. That’s another reason I took so long. I dug down for months of cached site histories. Only found a few requests for that particular coin, not any trades or sales.”

  “Good work, D.”

  “Bet your ass. Best part? The sales or trades they did talk about were all within fifty miles of Carson City. And all since last Wednesday.”

  “Bingo,” Tanner said softly, coldly.

  Shaye looked at him. She had seen the same predatory focus in Dingo when he caught the scent of a rabbit.

  “Plug the addresses I gave you into the nav computer,” Brothers said.

  “On it. Did you give them to me in any special order?”

  “First two are actual I-have-the-coin hits. Rest are just dropping hints and/or trolling for price info. And don’t talk about badges unless you have to,” Brothers added. “You’re a long way from L.A.”

  “D, I graduated higher in my academy class than you did,” Tanner said.

  “Then why do you keep calling me?” Brothers retorted.

  “You’re better at computers.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “I owe you,” Tanner said.

  “Not in this lifetime. Stay out of trouble, T-Bone.”

  “Hey, no worries. I have it on good authority that the aliens took me and left a polite pussy in my place.”

  Brothers was still laughing when he hung up.

  “Are we talking to the sheriff again?” Shaye asked.

  “I thought we’d take in some of the local Tahoe color.” As he spoke, he began feeding numbers into the nav computer with the speed of someone who had done it a lot.

  “Shopping? Spas? Casinos? Boating? Hiking?” she asked.

  “Pawnshops.”

  She blinked. “Pawnshops. Really?”

  “Really.” He gave her a wolfish grin. “Those aliens you mentioned taught me how to show a girl a good time. No butt probes required.”

  “That’s a relief.” Then, “You have a lead on Lorne’s coins, don’t you?”

  “That’s what we’re going to check out. You’re my sweetie, and you have your heart set on a Saint-Gaudens for your engagement ring.”

  “I do?” she asked, startled.

  “It’s a classy coin and you’re a classy sweetie,” he said blandly. He wondered if he should be insulted that the idea of being engaged to him made her do a double take.

  “So we find the coins and go back to the sheriff?” she asked.

  No engagement ring required.

  “Conrad has made up his mind that everything is kosher in Refuge. Who am I to harsh his mellow?”

  “But—”

  “Fasten your seat belt,” Tanner said, starting the car. “Wouldn’t want my classy sweetie to hurt her pert little nose on the nasty hard windshield.”

  “I’ve changed my mind about the aliens. I want the other Tanner back.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “No problem. They’re getting tired of him, too.”

  The closest place on Tanner’s hit list was a rented corner in a pawnshop masquerading as a secondhand store on the California side of Lake Tahoe.

  “Looks like a locals-only joint,” he said as he parked the car in front.

  “Why do you say that?” Shaye asked.

  “The window displays. This is where full-time residents go who get hard up and hope to cash out their fad collections—Pokémon cards or Justin Bieber records and signed sweatbands—and catch up on their rent or car payments. Or a woman whose boyfriend screwed around hocks the engagement ring and buys some new outfits. Small-time community stuff. The owner will have receipts for most of it and a lame explanation or a faulty memory for the rest.”

  The shop was small, no cleaner than it had to be, and smelled of the cigarettes someone had smoked in the back office. The squeaking front door brought out a woman who was just like the shop. She watched while they worked their way to the corner where odds and ends of mostly costume jewelry were for sale. A locked case held the items with supposedly real gold set with possibly real stones. Some coin and arrowhead collections were in the same case.

  “CanIhelpya,” she said.

  “Hope so,” he said, glancing up from the coins with a smile. “My sweetie wants a gold coin. What do you have?”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  “Nothing in the safe?” he asked easily. “She really wants it.”

  “Not just any old coin, babe,” Shaye said, smiling like a sweetie. “A 1932 Saint-Gaudens. My daddy taught me to be real particular. Family tradition, you know.”

  Tanner reached into his pocket and came out with a twenty. “If you’d look for that coin in your safe,” he said to the woman, “I’ll pay you for your time. If you find the coin, we can talk about price.”

  The woman held the twenty up to the overhead light before she pocketed the bill and vanished into the back office again. She returned with a gold coin in a transparent plastic box.

  Tanner took the box. A tag stuck on the bottom had a recent date in black ink.

  “Gimme,” Shaye said. She turned the box until it caught the light well enough that she read both sides. “That’s a 1932, all right. Looks good.”

  The woman took back the box and named a price that made Tanner’s eyebrows rise.

  “Hell, sweetie,” he said to Shaye, “I’d be better off buying a diamond.” He turned to the woman. “Is this a consignment item?”

  “Nope. Bought it outright.”

  “Did the woman who brought it in leave her name?” he asked.

  “Man.”

  “Did the man leave his name?” Tanner asked patiently.

  “Nope. Took my cash, cussed me for not paying more, and left.”

  “Huh. Usually old men don’t cuss at women.”

  “Who said he was old?”

  “What did he look like?” Tanner asked.

  “A useless steak-head like my second ex. That was thirty-six years ago. You gonna buy that coin?”

  Tanner knew the end of question-and-answer time had arrived. He thought about showing his badge—the shop was on the California side of the line—but decided he would wait until she was the best lead he had. Whoever had stolen the coins hadn’t done much business here. It was probably the first place the thief came across.

  Or the one he lived closest to.

  “I have to go think about it,” Tanner said.

  And to find a better twist than sweetie’s engagement ring. Or D could put in a word to the local business-license people. The old lady’s memory mig
ht improve if her license was threatened.

  “You sure he didn’t leave a name?” Shaye asked the woman. “Maybe he wants to get engaged.”

  The woman laughed, coughed, and shook her head. “Near as I can remember, he swore he was John Smith.”

  Tanner swore, period.

  “Hey, I’m Jane Doe,” Shaye said. “Match made in heaven, right?”

  The woman looked at Tanner. “Got yourself a live one. Hope you can keep it up.”

  Shaye snickered.

  Tanner took his sweetie’s arm and headed out the door. Maybe the next place would be run by someone with a better memory, or more vulnerability to a badge.

  “Are we any closer to circumstantial?” Shaye asked as he started up the car.

  “Not nearly enough to budge the sheriff,” he said. “Lorne didn’t sell the coin to her, but the timing is right. Someone marked the day of the week it was received on the box. Ink was new and tag was clean, so it probably was recently applied.”

  “Nothing else in the place was fresh.”

  “Better than a lot I’ve seen.”

  “Oh, I’m so looking forward to the next pawnshop,” she said.

  “Sweetie would be more enthusiastic.”

  “Sweetie has the brains of a baked potato.”

  Tanner’s grin was a flash of white against the beard shadow that was already showing. “You did real well back there.”

  “The joys of being raised by a society maven. I can act with the best of them.”

  “Good thing,” he said. “In L.A. I could threaten to jerk her license if her memory didn’t improve real quick. Maybe I could even pull a name and address or license plate off the purchase slip.”

  “She didn’t look like she was long on paperwork.”

  He didn’t disagree. He lowered his window, grateful for the fresh air after the close, dusty shop. Though Lake Tahoe was more than a quarter mile away, it smelled like they were parked right on it. Breathing deeply, he pressed a button on the navigation system and punched in the second address.

  “Aces Up,” Shaye read on the screen. “That’s in Carson City. It’s the first casino owned by Wilson Desmond. You met him at the party-turned-memorial—he’s one of the chosen bald. Everyone calls him Ace.”

  “Chosen bald?”

  “Shaves his head rather than give in to male-pattern baldness or a ridiculous comb-over,” she explained. “Quite a few city men in their early forties take that route.”

  Tanner smiled slightly. “Tahoe Sky wasn’t a locals kind of place. Too high end.”

  “Aces Up attracts high-end local, with the dedicated gamblers from Reno and Tahoe coming down for a change of scene,” Shaye said. “Ace told Kimberli the place is kind of a dress rehearsal for his dream casino. He wants to turn Carson Valley into a gambling and resort destination.”

  “So Ace and your boss are close?”

  Shaye shrugged. “She’s a fund-raiser. He’s a man with funds. Besides, Kimberli already has a boy toy.”

  Tanner remembered the GQ-handsome Peter and asked, “How many casinos does Ace have?”

  She shrugged. “Not enough. He and his backers own three and are looking to build one as big as the biggest in Reno and as fancy as any Las Vegas palace.”

  “Maybe whoever stole the coins likes to gamble locally, and Ace ended up with the pot,” Tanner said. “Whatever, let’s have a chat with Ace’s pawnshop manager. You know Ace, right?”

  “Not as well as Kimberli wants me to.”

  “Sex as a sales tool?” Tanner asked, trying not to snarl.

  “Not quite that bad.”

  I hope.

  Tanner started the car. It made some really unhappy sounds, spewed blue smoke, and died. He muttered under his breath and tried again. The car had a lot of miles on it—hard city time for the most part—but he’d hoped it would hang on for at least another six months.

  Not looking good, he thought.

  The starter ground, the car farted mightily, and the engine caught. It kept running, ragged but game.

  “Some machines don’t like altitude,” Shaye said. “Like you don’t like small towns.”

  Tanner didn’t know why the truth irritated him, but it did. “The real problem is LAPD cut back on maintenance in ways you can’t make up for later.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If something breaks, there’s always emergency money to fix it, but upkeep? Not so much. Same with the roads, sewers, water pipes, and everything else the city controls. Bad maintenance wears things out faster.”

  “But you bought the car anyway.”

  “The price was right.”

  “That’s what Ace said about the casino in Carson,” Shaye said. “Word is, he bought it for a tenth of a cent on the dollar—or won it in an all-night poker game.”

  “Why don’t you make an appointment with him and he can tell me all about it?”

  “I won’t bother Ace if I can help it. His assistant can do what we need.”

  “Pawnbrokers don’t like to talk to assistants. It will be faster to go straight to Ace.”

  “These are my connections, not yours,” she pointed out.

  “Good thing we’ve got a lot of time.”

  But he didn’t argue the point. He knew that investigations involved turning over a lot of rocks in hope of finding the right worm. Besides, he hadn’t enjoyed sharing a ride with anyone since Brothers got promoted to a desk.

  Brothers never turned me on.

  Shaye worked him like a light switch.

  Sixteen

  Tanner drove into the Aces Up parking lot and turned off his car’s unhappy engine. “Looks more like Monaco than Glitter Gulch,” he said of the building. “Fresh paint, artsy sign, no burned-out bulbs or flickering neon, and a clean parking lot.”

  “Like I said, a dress rehearsal. Locals gamble here, but only the high rollers get upstairs. No shorts or sandals allowed on the upper casino floor. You want to play slots next to people wearing flip-flops, surfer pants, and Hawaiian shirts? You can do that at ground level, but you won’t make it past the bouncers guarding the mezzanine entrances.”

  “No wonder Lorne and his poker pals drove to the Silver Lode.”

  “The old ranchers might have anniversary dinners at Aces Up—the restaurant is almost painfully classy and has really fine food—but the old ranchers don’t really care much for Ace himself.”

  “He’s not their kind of people?” Tanner asked.

  “They don’t trust manicures and Italian loafers.”

  “Yeah, I can’t imagine Lorne getting all fancied up in a tie and suit just to enjoy a drink and a card game.”

  “From what Kimberli says, you might get away without a tie upstairs, but only if you’ve been gambling for more than twelve hours and have lost a bundle already.”

  He looked at Shaye. She was the least produced, turned-out, or self-conscious woman he’d ever met—and the sexiest. He liked knowing that if he went to bed with her, he wouldn’t wake up to raccoon eyes and a face that needed an hour with a makeup artist.

  “So Kimberli likes Ace’s casino and you don’t,” he said.

  “Nothing personal. Gambling just doesn’t light up my blood. And the casinos . . .” She shook her head. “Forget quiet desperation. They’re noisy desperation. So I don’t spend any more time than I have to in them.”

  He laughed. “Smart lady.”

  “Ace is smart, too. Underneath that glossy surface is one very shrewd businessman. The local gambling competition is strictly small town and downscale. He bought Aces Up cheap, renovated, and proved that he could attract a high-end crowd to the valley floor.”

  “Yeah. From what I’ve seen, his local competition has to lure people through the doors with soft slots and easy tables, low-dollar single-deck and guaranteed ninety-seven percent payouts. Three percent of the day’s take in penny and nickel slots isn’t much.”

  She listened and realized all over again that Tanner was more than a hard body a
nd a compelling face. He had a brain and wasn’t afraid of using it.

  And he was good company.

  “That’s why the Conservancy spends a lot of time charming Ace,” she said. “He has enough money to keep Kimberli’s mustangs in hay for the rest of the century, and land to let them run.”

  “Yet Ace will make time to talk to you if you ask,” Tanner said.

  Her expression said she wasn’t thrilled. But she was game. “C’mon. Let’s get it over with.” Then she heard her own words and sighed. “That didn’t come out right.”

  “Ace isn’t your kind of guy?”

  “About the only thing we have in common is the Conservancy. Makes conversation pretty limited.”

  Tanner’s smile was a flash of hard teeth. “We’ll see what we can do to expand his horizons.”

  “I’m hoping we won’t have to go to him at all. If we do, please remember that Ace may make Conservancy donations for his image, but his money spends just like a true believer’s. Whether he means to or not, he’s done a lot of good.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t bite or piss on the rug.”

  She just shook her head and bit her lip against a smile.

  No sooner did they walk in the front entrance than a thin, nervous young man with startling natural red hair approached them. The suit he wore was ill fitting and his string tie was lopsided and frayed at one end.

  “Shaye Townsend?” he asked.

  “And guest,” Tanner said.

  “Oh, uh, yeah. Ace told me to give you any help you needed. I’ll take you upstairs.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I was wondering how we would get past the clothes police.”

  He almost laughed, then cleared his throat. “I promised the pit boss we wouldn’t stop for a game. Follow me.”

  An employee elevator was waiting for them. Their guide used a key card, then fidgeted for the short ride up. The instant the door opened, he set off at a brisk pace down a hallway that paralleled the second-floor casino, looking neither right nor left. The wall dividing them from the casino was made of a smoky kind of glass that allowed anyone in the hall to watch the action without being seen.

  Tanner had seen one-way glass windows in interrogation rooms, but never an entire wall. Well-dressed people were drinking from crystal glasses and pushing chips on the line for bets. Some of the players were still wearing clothes from last night’s parties, though no one seemed obviously drunk. The feel of money was everywhere, but there was no cash in sight.